Recently Pope Leo speaking to seminarians and priests from Spain, said this:
Removing the supernatural and finding the unnatural
At the centre of the Holy Father’s address was a striking quotation from G.K. Chesterton: “Take away the supernatural, and what remains is the unnatural” (cf. Heretics, VI). Pope Leo XIV used this line as a key to his entire message, explaining that when the living relationship with God is obscured or weakened, life itself begins to fall into disorder from within. This “unnatural” state concerns not only scandalous sin, but the silent, daily decision to live as though God were merely a concept, pushed to the margins of one’s thoughts and choices.
For a seminarian or a priest, this danger is heightened. What could be more unnatural, the Pope asked, than speaking of God with familiarity while living as if He did not truly exist in the fabric of one’s life? He warned that nothing is more dangerous than becoming accustomed to the things of God without truly living from God. Everything, then, begins - and always returns - to a living and concrete relationship with the One who has chosen us.
My astute, humble supernatural comments:
Many Catholics feel as though the institutional Church through its overreaching reform of the Tridentine Mass attempted to remove as much of the “supernatural” concerning the Mass and other Sacraments and even sacramentals, in order to make the Mass more intelligible, less formal, less reverent (less supernatural) and more natural, all of which has led to the unnatural loss of reverence, awe and wonder.
And thus Catholics go elsewhere, mostly to nothing (nones) the most unnatural thing for Catholics to do or elsewhere, like the FSSPX. But those going to so-called “Tradition” are far fewer in numbers than those going to Protestant non-denominational sects with their exuberant musical entertainment, Bible studies and fellowship. The actual schism in the Church that doesn’t need the pope, bishops or priests for the Sacraments are those going to Protestant non-denominational sects, not to mention, of course, those who have become nones.
One of the things that Vatican II did not mention or foresaw was eliminating kneeling to receive Holy Communion, removing altar railings to make way for a “chow line” of those constantly on the move as they go to Holy Communion and for many processing in a direction not even close to the altar or even towards it!
One of the greatest restorations that can be made to the Bugnini Mass is the restoration of kneeling for Holy Communion at an altar railing. It moves the reception of Holy Communion back to the supernatural, to the supernatural altar of God in heaven and a tangible, touchable, supernatural experience of the altar as the altar railing is not only an extension of God’s altar in heaven, but the altar in the Church.
For me, as a child, I always felt I was at the altar when I knelt to receive Holy Communion and waited for the priest, acting in persona Christi, to offer me Holy Communion along with the communal aspect of those kneeling on either side of me to do the same. It was a suburb supernatural experience of the personal and communal aspects of receiving Holy Communion.
As well, as a child, teenager and young adult, it was more of a supernatural experience for me to kneel at the altar railing to pray my penance, adore Christ in the Blessed Sacrament or simply say a prayer on a visit to the Church apart from Mass.
The altar railing was and is a sacramental, touching the supernatural, and leading us away from the unnatural, blah, superficial and irreverent to the Supernatural and All Holy!
